


Purr-suasion

by hopeandjoy



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Cats, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Post-Canon, ike is a cat person as we all know, mercenary husbands, soren is not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 02:16:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13537572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeandjoy/pseuds/hopeandjoy
Summary: Ike has, historically, liked cats, both lower- and uppercase. Soren does not. Soren had happily escaped a certain Cat, uppercase, when he and Ike left Tellius years ago. But Ike's good heart has brought a cat, lowercase, into their home and it's giving Soren a bad case of deja-vu.





	Purr-suasion

The problem arrived home one evening while Soren squinted at the worn holes in Ike’s socks by the light of the hearth. Winter had just barely left the land, the first winter the two had spent in the little house on the outskirts of a small town that was… somewhere on the continent of Valm. To Soren’s slight embarrassment, as soon as he had put down the map upon the end of his and his husband’s six years long journey, he had forgotten to track the shifting borders created by turbulent nobles. To be frank, he hoped to never have to deal with their stupidity again.

Winter had passed with only a few incidents, like when a blizzard ran through and collapsed the house’s rotting roof. Ike and Soren had spent a good week repairing the house and shivering in bed. But otherwise, they had remained in good health and their food stores had held. It was overall one of the easier winters they had lived through since leaving Tellius for good.

This left them with the tasks of early spring to go through now, and one of those was darning the woolen socks they wore for warmth in winter. However, while time had granted Soren a great many domestic skills he had sorely lacked before, he still struggled with some of the smaller tasks of sewing and knitting and repairing clothes. It didn’t help that while the heavy chill of winter had largely lifted, the chill still existed at night and stiffened Soren’s fingers.

That’s why when Ike opened the door and announced his presence that night, Soren had greeted him without looking up.

“Good news,” Ike announced, setting down the hoe and spade Soren had given him the other day to be sent to the blacksmith for repairs. “We don’t have to pick up the seed you wanted ourselves. Josef said his daughter would bring it in the morning. He claimed she jumped at the chance.”

“The one who looks at you?”

“Ah, well…” Ike scratched his chin. “It’ll help us out this time, I guess.” He made a face. “I donno why this keeps happening to me.”

“It’s because you’re handsome and fit,” Soren said airily. “And they don’t know you haven’t looked at a woman your entire life.”

Soren had had a reputation as a teenager for jealousy, and it wasn’t unfounded, if he were to be honest with himself. Every woman, from village girls to warriors to princesses, seemed to flock to Ike. And while Soren was loyal and true and had been deeply in love since age six, he was still a “he”. And those women were still “she”. But shortly after Soren’s 18th birthday and shortly after he confessed the terrible crime of his parents, Ike had kissed him and Soren realized that Ike had never looked at a woman in that way in his entire life. Soren found himself now completely unburdened of the fear that a passing woman with a bright smile and large… assets could steal Ike from him. Other than protecting Ike from the machinations of a certain eager merchant woman, Soren let the matter drop from his mind.

Ike dropped heavily into sitting down next to Soren. It was at that moment that the sage glanced at his husband from the corner of his eye and saw him holding a bundle of cloth. Soren’s hands paused.

“Ike. What is that?”

Ike looked vaguely sheepish. The bundle squirmed, meowed, and then a tiny orange head poked out to look at Soren.

“ _Ike_.”

“He was cold and I didn’t see his mom anywhere. And we’re the only ones other than the farmers who walk between the village and here so…”

“Mother cats sometimes leave their kittens behind. She’s probably looking for it as we speak.”

“But Soren,” Ike said, with very serious eyes. “He came right up to me.”

The unfortunate truth was that Soren was not nearly as heartless as others had so often believed. He could be cold and logical in the face of his own emotions, but as for Ike’s requests…

Well, he had fallen for Ike for his ability to reach his hand out to someone in need. Soren had lost this battle before he had even known it began.

And that is how Soren had to start living with… _a cat._

* * *

 

Soren and cats, Ike and cats, and Soren and Ike and cats, both lower- and uppercase, had a bit of a storied history that started when Soren was a child struggling to survive in the wilds of the Gallian forests and lasted to that very day. Soren in particular remembered one incident in their childhood involving the cats that lived in the Mercenaries’ cellar in the hopes of catching rats and Ike.

Ike had always had a soft spot for the fuzzier things in life, despite what his dour attitude would suggest about him. One of the first spots he had dragged his brand-new reading tutor and friend to had been where Ike would sneak the cats some meat. It was extremely generous, considering Ike’s normal attitude towards meat. The cats swarmed around Ike, fliting between his legs and meowing at them.

However, they gave Soren a wide berth, which was fine by him. They looked like those subhumans who had always avoided him, even if they were quite smaller.

“You should just put you hand out, Soren,” Ike said. “They’re really friendly.”

“I’m okay here,” Soren said.

In those days, Ike had not quite figured out the art of pushing Soren’s boundaries carefully, and he grabbed Soren’s hand to hold it out to the mass of cats. The speed at which he had done this caused their hands to push a cat to the side who had been eating, and it promptly hissed and swiped at Ike and Soren’s hands. Soren hissed back, and the cats scattered.

It was indicative of how animals in general treated Soren. Horses spooked, sheep ran, dogs barked. As a child Soren had thought it was something wrong with him that they sensed and as a teenager Soren felt that he had had those suspicions confirmed upon finding out he was Branded. Of course animals could sense his tainted blood, animals were sensitive to the spirts to begin with.

This belief was challenged upon the end of the Goddess War, when he found the Branded swordsman sleeping in a pile of barn cats as Micaiah soothed the groups’ nervous horses. Perhaps then animals sensed some sort of greater threat on him. Soren did not particularly care. Animals and he could avoid each other.

* * *

 

The next major event in the history of Soren and cats was tall, handsome, blue, and very, very much a Cat. Ike had the ability to charm people without any effort or realization, and Gallia’s (only) diplomat was little different. Soren didn’t have anything against Ranulf per se. As far as laguz, and beast laguz at that, were concerned, he was at least tolerable. He had something approaching a brain in his head, at least.

Ike and Ranulf friendship morphed from something cursory to best friendship towards the end of the Mad King’s War, and at the time Soren had felt no concern or even a brief sense of fleeting jealousy. That was, he had not felt it until very shortly after they had crossed that damned bridge back into Crimea.

Soren had been passing by the camp’s training groups when he heard Ranulf’s voice.

“I’ll have you know,” Ranulf said, sitting on a stump with his elbow on his crossed leg and chin on his hand, “that my belly fur is very fluffy, thank you very much. Why do you think we beasts don’t roll over? It would ruin our whole image.”

Ike had been practicing his sword form while Ranulf watched. Soren saw him lift his bandana to wipe his forehead before sheathing his sword. “If you’re going to make claims like that, you better be ready to prove them,” Ike said.

Ranulf laughed. “Sure, whatever,” he said before transforming. “Just don’t tell my subordinates; they might never listen to me again.” He rolled over. “Pet away, my friend.”

Soren saw Ike’s hand reach out as if in slow motion and his mouth opened before his brain had even formulated what he had wanted to say.

“Ike!” Soren called out. Ike’s hand paused, inches away from touching Ranulf as he turned his head to look at Soren. “I was looking for you,” Soren finished.

“What for?” Ike asked as Ranulf rolled back over. “Is there something you need to discuss with me?”

“No, I-“ Soren paused, racking his head for excuses. “I wanted… I wanted to spar with you. I need to improve my fighting skills against swordsmen.” He glanced at Ranulf. “I also wanted to improve my skills with fire magic.”

Ranulf looked at Soren, and while he said nothing, Soren felt as if those eyes were laughing at him. Ranulf transformed back with a crooked grin. “I’ll leave you two to that, then,” he said.

* * *

 

Unfortunately, that couldn’t be the end of the whole business with Ranulf. Three years, one marriage, and one revolution later, he came to the Greil Mercenaries to hire them to support the Laguz Alliance.

Perhaps upon Ike confessing to Soren and their marriage, Soren had become less jealous of women, but that didn’t eliminate competition. There were still men. And there were still men like Ranulf, with an easygoing humor and physical strength that Soren did not have himself.

Men like Ranulf, who enjoyed looking at Ike’s biceps, which had filled out greatly with the last burst of puberty that had hit Ike.

It didn’t help that Ranulf seemed to enjoy occasionally poking the bear that was Soren’s temper. On one memorable occasion, Soren had been in the planning tent early with the sun, preparing his plans and his words carefully. Spread around him on the table were carefully marked maps and rolls with information as varying from their supplies to projected weather to biographies of enemy commanders. Everything was exactly how he liked it.

“Morning, Soren,” Ranulf called as he ducked into the tent. “How’s it going?”

“Hmm,” Soren grumbled in response.

“Cheery as always, I see.” Ranulf scratched behind one of his ears before reaching over the left hand edge of Soren’s (completely organized, entirely necessary, thank you very much) papers and pushing them to the floor with a swift swipe. Soren could only stare open mouthed as Ranulf pushed himself up to sit on the table in their place.

The silence stretched. The two stared at each other in the quiet, Soren growing more angered as Ranulf looked more confused.

“Those. Were my papers. For the meeting,” Soren ground out.

Ranulf looked down. “…they’re still there, aren’t they?”

“Why.”

Ranulf’s eyebrows knitted together. “I wanted to sit here.”

Soren stood there for a minute more, clenching and unclenching his hands until he finally turned to his pack and fished out a Fire tome. “You have five seconds to run,” he informed Ranulf as he flipped to the next page with power.

“Hey, wait a sec-“

“Five.”

“Listen, I’ll think about it-“

“Four.”

“-longer next time!”

“Three.”

“Man, you really are touchy.”

“Two.”

“Woah! Wait a- oh, Ike!” Ranulf called. Soren paused and looked at the entrance of the tent, where Ike was frozen mid duck, looking over the scene.

“Ike!” Soren said. “He pushed my papers to the ground. The papers! _For the meeting!_ ”

“Uh,” Ike eloquently said.

“What is he, your father?” Ranulf quipped. “I was just making room to sit.”

Ike’s eye darted to the ground. “It probably be better to look before you sit next time, Ranulf. I’m pretty sure that even if I were the one who messed with Soren’s plans, I’d get maimed.” Ike gently plucked the tome from his husband’s hands, and Soren let it go without a fight. “It’s probably better to save the maiming for the enemy, right?”

Soren took a deep breath. “Yes. You’re quite right, Commander.”

* * *

 

There were days when Soren thought it was all deliberate on Ranulf’s part, that this was a fight for Ike’s affections and time. But then Ranulf would talk down his oaf of a prince from doing whatever stupid notion he had this time, whether it involved informing him of the purpose of forts or the Beorc notion of marriage and why that meant maybe he shouldn’t lay dead bears outside of Soren’s tent.

One time, Soren found himself waking up in a medical tent with little memory of how he arrived there, but his shoulder pounded in pain. It was a pain he knew well, from the forceful restitching of tissue performed by healing staves on severe injuries. It was then that he recalled the javelin that had lodged in his shoulder from a Soldier’s dying throw in the previous battle. Soren had finished the rest of the battle in that sorry state, but the last thing he remembered was the retreat of red armored soldiers across the river before he passed out.

Wrenching his eyes open, Soren did not meet any of the expected faces, but instead Ranulf hovering over his bedroll.

“Welcome back to the world of the living, Soren,” Ranulf joked.

“Ha ha,” Soren deadpanned. He grunted in pain as he forced himself to sit up, pushing with both his injured and uninjured shoulder. “What time is it?”

“Some time in the afternoon,” Ranulf said.

Soren side eyed him. “…how many days has it been?”

“Eh, like…” Ranulf counted on his fingers, probably for dramatic effect. “Around two and a half?”

“T-two and a half?!” Soren exclaimed. “Who’s been monitoring things?”

“Oh, Ike.”

“Ike?!” Soren may have loved the man more than he loved life or himself, but Ike’s handwriting was a cypher Soren could barely make out and he had a bad habit of not writing thing down as he checked them, causing him to forget details. “I’m going to have to get started immediately,” Soren said, making to stand.

“Whoa there,” Ranulf said, pushing him back down. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let the healers say you can leave, or else Ike’ll have my head.”

It was that moment that Mist reentered the tent. “Oh, Soren! I’m happy to see you up! Brother’s been worried.” She then looked over at Ranulf and seemed to start when she noticed him. “…Hello, Ranulf. Do you need some help as well?”

Ranulf stood up and brushed past Mist casually. “Naw, was just making sure you didn’t have a runaway patient.”

* * *

 

All of this, however, did little to warm Soren up to the fuzzier side of life. Along the course of his and Ike’s long journey through the world, cats avoided Soren and Soren avoided cats. It really was better for everyone that way.

But now there was one orange shaped nuisance in Soren’s life he mused as he glared at it over the table. Ike occasionally reached down and fed it scraps from his food, which only served to irritate Soren further. It had been hard, especially at first, for the foreign mercenaries to jobs from the near villagers, much less food. After a few raised barns, a couple routed bandit groups, and a tax season, people had warmed up to them, but hunger was never far from Soren’s worries.

Worse, normally they only person Ike pushed extra food on was Soren.

“You shouldn’t do that, Ike,” Soren said. “You’ll just encourage it to beg at the table and we’ll never know peace when eating ever again.”

“The little guy’s got to eat somehow.”

“It’s a cat. It will hunt. It’s what they do. …Don’t give me that look, Ike. We work for our food too. It’s just the way of the world.”

“Soren…”

“Ike. If you want to keep this cat, my only rules are that you do not feed it scraps when we eat and that it does not sleep in our bed.”

Ike sighed. “Okay, okay. I understand.”

But regardless of whether Ike said he understood, he was clearly worried about it. Soren noticed that he took extra time to fall asleep that night and as Soren rushed him out the door so they could move out to their job for the day, he looked back at the cat with worry.

When they arrived back at the house that evening, covered with dirt from a day laying bricks, the cat was nowhere to be seen. Soren privately hoped that it had left for good, but when he saw the look on Ike’s face, he retracted that thought guiltily.

The cat remained missing until night fell. Ike and Soren were sitting before the hearth as they often did on quiet nights, and Ike had just wrapped his arm around Soren to pull him closer. Soren closed his eyes and let his head fall on Ike’s (broad, strong) shoulder with a pleased sigh before he heard the pitter patter of paws and felt something plop in his lap. Soren paused. He counted to ten silently. He looked down.

In Soren’s lap lay a dead mouse. In Ike’s lay a very pleased looking kitten. Ike’s face brightened.

“There you are!” he exclaimed, petting the cat. “I was afraid you’d never come back. And Soren was right, you could do it!”

Soren got up, tossed the mouse by its tail to a corner, and debated burning his robes. (On one hand, he had owned these gray robes for years and they had been a wedding present from Mist – but on the other was mouse blood and cat spittle.)

“Soren,” Ike cooed in a voice that Soren had never heard before in his life. “His belly is so soft.”

Soren turned on his heel, entered their bedroom, closed the door, held his head in his hands, and groaned.

* * *

 

Time marched on, and spring became summer which in turn became fall – and fall became tax season. Soren had made a name and a small fortune for himself last year by taking on the Lord of the village’s finances as well as a few merchants and his work had caused what felt like every individual in a five-mile radius to drop their tax paperwork onto his lap. Soren didn’t care; he found long form calculations soothing for one, it allowed him to stockpile money and food for winter for another, and even with the volume of requests, none of them matched the intensity of budgeting an entire army last of all. Still, it meant that he went through dozens of candles and that the fire in the office remained as full as the piles of papers and quills and books and scrolls on Soren’s desk in the study. Ike would come in occasionally to poke Soren into eating or actually sleeping, but for the most part Soren was left alone to work.

The cat too left Soren alone. The cat was quickly growing up and growing fat on catching the mice that tried to get to their grain stores, but it and Soren were at a chilly ceasefire. They did not interact, but instead looked at each other from across the room. When one attempted to cuddle with Ike, the other butt in. And, on one embarrassing occasion, Soren had hissed at the cat when it climbed on top the bed while he and Ike were otherwise engaged, so to speak. Perhaps on the ill will on one of its owners, the cat remained “the cat” with no other name.

Soren set down his quill and rubbed his eyes with two ink stained fingers. His fingers ached, his back was trying to escape his body, and the current candle was almost down to a nub. Soren extinguished it with a wave of his hand and moved to replace it when he heard a knock on the study’s door.

“Come in,” Soren said.

Ike stepped into the room carefully, as one would to avoid spooking a horse. “I’ve finished dinner,” he said.

“That’s nice.” Soren continued rummaging around. “Do you see any candles near you – oh, never mind.” Soren straightened up, holding a candle. “I found one.” He removed the nub and replaced it, but paused before lighting it when he saw Ike hadn’t left. “…Can you bring it here?” he tried.

“Why don’t we eat together?”

“I’ve still got ages to go, Ike. The faster I finish, the more time we’ll have.”

“Soren,” Ike scolded. “Your hands are shaking. Come and take a break.”

Soren grumbled but allowed himself to be led away and forcefully sat down at the table. Soren could barely keep his eyes open as Ike ladled some spicy smelling stew into a bowl and set it in front of him. He knew that once he actually started eating, he’d be wide awake, mouth burning (as was often the consequence of letting Ike cook), but Soren had a feeling that his falling asleep was a part of Ike’s plan.

It was working quite amiably until a crash rang out and Soren startled back to being fully awake. He looked over the table through the open room to the study (his first mistake) to see the cat standing on his desk, paw outstretched, and orange tail swishing back and forth. On the floor was the candlestick, three stacks of books, and Soren’s carefully organized out stack of finished work.

What came out of Soren’s mouth next was probably cause by a great number of factors – fury, sleep deprivation, hunger, the ability of a grown-ass man to be threatened by a small mammal – but Soren had a witness in Ike, which is why it was immortalized instead of swiftly forgotten and buried.

“By the Goddess!” Soren yelled. “That’s the last time, Ranulf!”

There was a pause and then a splash as the ladle fell into the pot. Ike slowly started to chuckle, but it rapidly became a full-bodied laugh. Soren flushed with embarrassment and sunk further into his chair.

The worst part came a month later, when Mist’s biyearly letter to her wayward brothers arrived and mentioned how cute it was that Soren named their cat after Ranulf.

Soren threw the letter at Ike’s head while he guffawed.

* * *

 

“Are you sure I should go?” Ike asked, pushing Soren’s bangs away from his sweaty forehead.

“I’m not dying, Ike,” Soren said, though his head was pounding, he could barely breathe, and every time he sat up, the room spun. “Not having money for food will make me sicker than you not being here.”

Ike clicked his tongue. “We got plenty from you doing accounting, and you know it.”

“Ike, please. I’ll feel better knowing that I don’t have to worry about our reputation. As long as someone doesn’t come to you with a sob story about a sibling in a bandit hideout and you don’t go charging into one, you and I will be perfectly safe separate. It’s just a roof.”

“That was only once.”

Soren fixed Ike with a look.

Ike sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Okay, I’ll go,” he said. “But I’ll be worried.”

Soren smiled. “I understand. I will wait for you.”

Ike gathered Soren’s hand in his and kissed his knuckles before squeezing it and releasing.

Soren quickly fell asleep upon hearing the front door shut, but woke up shivering only what felt to be moments later. His bedclothes and the sheets felt soaked with his sweat and he suddenly felt foolish to have shooed Ike away. Soren had spent many illnesses alone in his life, theoretically, but since joining the Greil Mercenaries at 10, Ike had hovered over him for nearly every cold, every injury, every illness, no matter how foul to handle. It was only fair, as Ike seemed immune to illness himself and Soren hovered much like a mother hen if he so much as cut himself shaving.

Ike had been fretting because he probably wouldn’t be back home until the sun had already set. Soren now felt lonely as the sun streamed in bright and strong from the between the shutters. He rolled to his side, curling into a ball as he shuddered. It was only for one afternoon, Soren insisted to himself as his heart pounded. He could make it at least that long.

It was at that moment he felt the bed dip and a warm body curl at his back before purring. Soren paused mid-shiver, before tentatively reaching out a hand.

Ranulf’s belly really was quite soft, and he made a murr and lifted his head inquisitively before dropping it back down again and continuing to purr. His tail beat lightly on the bed.

Soren pulled his hand back and closed his eyes.

* * *

 

When Ike arrived home later that evening, Soren and Ranulf were lying back to back.

**Author's Note:**

> soren regrets giving in 470 years later when watching his great-x20-grandson poking the paws of the cats the roam his land. damn it. why did he give into ike. now soren's seen as a crazy cat dude.


End file.
